Soulkeeper Read online

  “Gerag… used… you, didn’t he?” Devin said. “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me, Jac, not if it’s too difficult.”

  Jacaranda suppressed a shudder through her spine.

  “No, I mean, he did,” she said. “But there’s more to it. I wasn’t just his—his plaything.” How to explain? How to admit the role her soulless self had served? “I was their manager. Their caretaker.”

  “Their?” Devin asked.

  Jacaranda took in a deep breath and slowly let it out.

  “The other soulless. Gerag smuggled them in from East Orismund. They were taught to please. To fake pleasure. And then they were sold.”

  Devin’s jaw hardened. His hands clenched into fists.

  “He sold soulless as sex slaves to the wealthy,” Devin said. “That isn’t just illegal. It carries a penalty of death.”

  Jacaranda knew that, of course. That was why she’d escorted the soulless to Gerag’s mansion. It wasn’t just to keep Gerag’s hands clean. It was so she could execute anyone who spotted them, or worst-case scenario, the soulless themselves lest they be interrogated and potentially implicate Gerag.

  “Do you remember the cabin I burned back in Oakenwall?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “Sometimes the soulless would be so young as to attract suspicion. Those were dropped off the boats a few miles out from Londheim and taken to Oakenwall instead. A man there named Nathan Evart would take care of them until buyers arrived for their… their merchandise. That way it was the buyer’s responsibility to smuggle them into Londheim, not Gerag’s. Nathan kept notes of these ‘shipments.’ I was to burn the building to hide the evidence.”

  Devin was trying, she could tell he really was, but his anger bubbled over beyond his control.

  “That motherfucker. I’ll hang him by his toes from the city gates. I don’t care how much he donates to the church; evidence of an underground sex trade will be the end of him.”

  “I hope you get your chance,” she said. “I’m going to his mansion tonight, and I’d like you to come with me.”

  For the first time Devin looked taken aback.

  “What? There’s no reason for you to risk your life like that. If you share the logistics with me I can present evidence to my Vikar. The church will authorize a raid on his home for further proof. I understand you want your vengeance, but with a little patience we—”

  “No, it has to be tonight,” Jacaranda interrupted. “I infiltrated one of their boats and interrogated the captain. There’s to be an auction. A special auction.” This time it was Jacaranda who struggled to keep her emotions under control. “One of his soulless women awakened, Devin. She awakened, just like me, and he’s still going to sell her.”

  Devin flinched as if stabbed with a knife. Every trace of an argument vanished in an instant. He rose from his chair and approached the door. Something about the way he moved frightened her. It was like a shadow passed over him, erasing any kindness, worry, or compassion. All that remained was a fierce determination.

  “Get your daggers,” he said. “We’ve a job to do.”

  It was an order she was glad to follow. They moved under cover of darkness, two thieves slipping through the fog on the way to Quiet District. Jacaranda had changed into the same dark clothing she always wore during her midnight excursions, and she covered the lower half of her face with a red cloth. Between her hat and her mask, only her eyes were visible. Devin hid his face likewise, though his coat alone might still identify him.

  “You realize if you are seen it may prevent you from ever living a normal life within Londheim,” Devin said when they stopped just inside the district gate.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “This is the right thing to do, isn’t it? Something good? Something worth dying for?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think it is.”

  Jacaranda took the lead, and she kept close to the fences and the nearby mansions to reduce the chance of being seen. At last they reached the sprawling rectangular mansion next door, and the two peered around the side corner at the fenced-off entrance. Six armed men loitered about, casually chatting with one another.

  “That’s a lot more guards than usual,” Devin said after they retreated.

  “A high-profile auction,” Jacaranda said. “No one is taking chances.”

  “Then how do we get inside?”

  “Tell me, Soulkeeper, how often do smugglers use the front door?”

  He grinned mischievously.

  “What would I do without you?”

  “Live a much more boring life, I’d wager,” she said.

  “Not a worthwhile trade. Lead on, Jac.”

  Given Gerag’s paranoia, he naturally did not wish for constant parades of young men and women to be noticed entering through the front door of his home. This paranoia extended to the entire premises of his estate, but that had left him with a bit of a predicament. The cost of land in Quiet District was at a premium, and he’d been lucky to nab his cramped little plot. Most of the construction on his mansion had been completed by the time Jacaranda fell into Gerag’s control, but she remembered how proud he’d been to showcase his brilliant plan.

  “How could anyone possibly link the soulless to my home in Quiet District,” he’d bragged to his servant Belford while Jacaranda stood idly nearby, awaiting orders. “When the entrance isn’t even in Quiet District?”

  Like most districts, a brick wall separated Quiet District from the others, but its wall was much thicker and taller. Supposedly it was to ensure protection for their valuables, but Jacaranda thought it was only so they could feel the tiniest bit more special than those who lived with less. This larger wall required much more maintenance, for which the members gladly paid. This meant it was common for work crews privately hired by its wealthy to paint, plaster, or relayer bricks. Over the two years it’d taken Gerag to build his mansion, the sight of workers all around the area was common—so common, in fact, that no one paid attention when his men started removing portions of the wall so they might access the ground beneath.

  Jacaranda led Devin back through the entrance of Quiet District and then skirted along the dividing wall. They were in another residential area, but with Low Dock’s greater proximity, its homes were much less extravagant. Jacaranda found the particular home with ease, for she’d passed in and out of it hundreds of times over the past decade. It was a squat building with stone walls and thick wooden shutters. Two dozen bird statues perched from the gutters, a strange touch left over from the previous owners before Gerag purchased it.

  “Is it locked?” Devin whispered.

  “Always,” she whispered back. “But that won’t be a problem.”

  Lock picking had been one of the easier skills she’d picked up as a soulless. It required concentration, patience, and a keen understanding of basic mechanics. The first two came easily as a soulless, and the third was a matter of study and practice. She withdrew her torsion wrench and hook pick from their little slots in her custom dagger belt. It took less than a minute for her to properly position the pins. Once it was unlocked she put away her pins but did not open the door. She waited for Devin to ready his sword and then gently turned the knob and pushed inward.

  The interior was quiet and empty. The two quickly slipped inside and shut the door behind them. Another wave of disgust and disorientation struck Jacaranda as she looked upon the dusty furniture and vacant shelves. This shell of a home was tied to a thousand memories, and so few of them were good. She’d led dead-eyed men and women through here to their sexual enslavement, sometimes even children; damn that fat fucker Gerag.

  “Where’s the entrance?” Devin whispered.

  Jacaranda took him to the back bedroom. The house was purposefully kept clean but sparse, with only the occasional room rented out during slow months to disguise the building’s actual purpose in Gerag’s various reports to the tax men. This meant there was nothing unusual about the large bed and ripped mattress, at least
until one pushed it aside and lifted up the loose floorboards beneath to reveal a sloping set of stairs leading to a long dark tunnel.

  “You’re kidding me,” Devin said. “He built an entire tunnel?”

  “So far as I know, Gerag runs the entire market for illicit soulless in all of West Orismund,” Jacaranda said. “People will pay a lot of gold crowns for a well-trained soulless that is completely unknown to the church and state. Building this tunnel was merely a cost of doing business.”

  “What do people want them for?” Devin asked. “Is it just for… you know?”

  “Gerag never asked questions, and neither did I.”

  Because she hadn’t cared. She’d watched life after life pass through this tunnel, kept in pens, and then taken back out in the hands of their buyers. Over the years she’d picked up hints, though. Most were used for sex, but not always. Some buyers wanted to make sure Gerag trained the soulless to adequately react to pain, or to show fear. Some buyers specifically requested that their soulless not be trained at all to keep the price down. Those, Jacaranda suspected, were tortured and killed for their new owner’s pleasure. Whatever the appetites, Gerag was there to provide.

  Jacaranda realized her hands ached. She’d been holding the hilts of her daggers much too tight and forced her body to relax.

  “What should I expect once inside?” Devin asked. He adjusted the mask covering his face and checked his pistol to ensure that the loaded shot inside had not slipped loose in the barrel.

  “A locked door with a peephole, at least one guard, and then the pens we—they—keep the soulless in until purchase.”

  She started to descend but Devin grabbed her by the shoulder.

  “Wait,” he said. She turned, frustrated that he would delay when they were so close. What if the auction had already begun? Generally the important sales were done right after the reaping hour, which gave them half an hour at most, but Gerag easily could have started early if he thought all the big buyers had arrived.

  “Remember, we’re here to rescue the awakened woman,” Devin said. “Not to find and kill Gerag.”

  “Nothing will stop me from killing the bastard if I see him,” she warned.

  “And I don’t plan on stopping you,” he said. “But things are about to get hectic. If it comes down to the prisoner’s escape and your vengeance, I only ask that you make the right choice.”

  Jacaranda hopped into the tunnel and gestured for him to follow.

  “Stop worrying about my making the right decisions,” she said. “Worry about us making it out of here alive.”

  The tunnel was pitch-black from end to end, so they traveled with one hand in front of them and another hugging the wall. It didn’t take long to cross, for the tunnel only needed to dip underneath the wall dividing the districts and then up into the hidden basement Gerag had built beneath his mansion grounds. At the end was a slanted outline of a door, the light coming in through the cracks shockingly bright in the deep dark. Jacaranda paused a dozen feet away and held her hand behind her until Devin walked into it and halted. She touched his shoulder to help her orient herself to his body and then leaned in close.

  “Give me your pistol,” she whispered into his ear.

  “Do you know how to use it?”

  Jacaranda scoffed at him.

  “Any fool can use a pistol at this range. Just pull the trigger and watch them die.”

  Devin took her hand in his and then slid the pistol into her palm. She gripped it, surprised by the weight. The pistol was much heavier than it looked.

  “Stay here,” she whispered.

  Many buyers entered Gerag’s mansion through the front under pretense of parties or business, but some of the more frequent clientele didn’t like to be seen constantly exiting with soulless servants. Those were entrusted with a key to the outside house and the location of the secret tunnel. Jacaranda hoped that given the high-profile nature of tonight’s auction, it wouldn’t be unusual for one of those coming to enter through the tunnel. She crossed the rest of the distance to the bright outline of the door, pressed her body against the tunnel’s wall, and used the coded knock.

  Twice. Pause. Twice more. Pause. Once.

  A square of painfully bright light shone into the tunnel as a tiny window slid open in the middle of the door.

  “You’re arriving late,” a familiar voice said. It was Belford, Gerag’s most trusted servant. The recognition almost froze Jacaranda in place. Gerag fancied himself master of all things sexual with his soulless in training, but Belford… Belford taught the more intricate details. He had been the one to teach Jacaranda how to dress, how to eat, how to bathe and braid her hair to make herself beautiful to Gerag’s guests. If she possessed any semblance of a father, it was him.

  “I know,” she said. She placed the pistol into the window and pulled the trigger.

  The shot seemed to echo forever inside that claustrophobic tunnel. Jacaranda flinched each time, her breath caught in her throat. Logically, she knew she should bear equal hatred toward the old man as she did Gerag, but it just wasn’t there. She felt no sharp pleasure in delivering revenge, only a sad ache as a piece of her estranged past died in a bloody heap on a cold cellar floor, his brains splattered out the back of his skull.

  “We won’t have much time,” Devin said, pulling her out of her morbid reverie. Damn it, she fell into these states far too easily. Had to keep focused. Had to fight the wellspring of emotions that were as new to her as the day she was born. “Can you pick the lock?”

  “There’s no lock to pick,” she said. “Just a deadbolt.”

  Jacaranda’s hand was more than slender enough to slide through the opened window and pull aside the bolt. The door shuddered, she withdrew her hand, and then together they stepped over Belford’s corpse and entered Gerag’s soulless prison.

  From floor to wall to ceiling, the rectangular room was thick, ancient stone. At the end of the room was an open doorway leading to a stairwell. Six cells divided the space, three to each side of the slender walkway. Metal bars formed their perimeters with steel-enforced wooden doors as the only entrances. Within were a bed, a waste bucket, and a small table with cups of water.

  “Why keep them like prisoners?” Devin asked. “No soulless would ever attempt to run away.”

  “You forget what they were trained for,” she said. “A soulless will not resist an order unless its life is clearly in danger. Sometimes… sometimes that instinct needed to be broken entirely to satisfy a buyer’s demands. The cruel ones who wished for the soulless to cower, beg, and refuse. It takes time to eliminate that reflex, Devin. Time, and a lot of cruelty.”

  All but one of the six cells were empty. Jacaranda approached as if walking through a dream. The smell of the room threatened to steal her mind away to a thousand memories she never wanted to relive again. Each cell contained dozens of phantom girls and boys, good little puppets dutifully obeying their masters no matter the cruelty or degradation. It flooded her stomach with bile. It pricked her eyes with stubborn tears. The only saving grace, the only fact she could cling to that kept away the despair, was knowing that none of them had been aware of it. Only the most basic sensations of pain and pleasure registered, and they carried no preference to either. Consent was an irrelevant concept. Shame was as distant as the stars.

  But someone in that last cell did care. She was aware of her surroundings, and she most certainly did not desire a lifetime of slavery and degradation. Jacaranda unlocked the cell’s door and flung it open. The woman inside winced and covered her face with her arms. She wore a beautiful golden gown, and yellow ribbons were tied into the curls of her short blond hair. Her skin had been scrubbed clean in preparation for the auction, and even in that cell Jacaranda could smell a hint of perfume wafting off her body, a strong scent of flowers and incense.

  All the pretty dresses and all the perfume in the world could not hide the multitude of bruises that covered her arms, neck, and face. Captain Malin had mentioned how str
angely his “cargo” behaved, how they’d needed to drug her lest she throw herself overboard. Jacaranda didn’t want to imagine the violence the sailors had unleashed on her to keep her subdued. Imagining it might overwhelm her mind with anger beyond her control.

  Jacaranda had a million things she wished to tell the frightened young woman cowering at the far end of the cell. How she understood the trauma she’d been through. How she’d awakened herself, and had experienced the mind-breaking phenomenon of having been there for her entire life, but yet not. Instead she leaned on that door and quietly said, “Hey. Please, don’t be afraid.”

  “They always say that,” the woman said. She kept her arms over her face. “Don’t be afraid. It’s always a lie. You’re lying, too, aren’t you.”

  Jacaranda shot a glance at Devin, who was examining the other cells with a look of distaste.

  “I’m not lying,” she said. “And I can prove it.”

  “How?” the woman asked. Finally she peered over her arms. In answer, Jacaranda pulled down her scarf to expose the chain tattoos across her throat.

  “Because I’m just like you,” she said. “I was Gerag’s, and then I awoke. I’ve come to free you, too, if you’ll trust me.”

  Goddesses above, there was so much hurt in that woman’s eyes. No Soulkeeper had welcomed the girl when her soul plunged into her body like an unwanted invader, only violence and imprisonment. Jacaranda saw a spark, a faint, fearful spark of hope deep in those beautiful blue eyes.

  “So you know,” the woman said. “You know what it’s like.”

  “I do,” Jacaranda said, and she offered her hand. “And I’m here to help.”

  The woman pushed herself to her feet and absently brushed away dirt on her dress. It seemed now that she believed freedom might be a real possibility, her actions started to gain life, and a sense of urgency finally entered her voice to match the situation.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Jacaranda.”

  “Marigold.”

  The fat fuck loves his flowers, doesn’t he? Jacaranda thought.